The application of preserving agents, such as certain organic acids, in animal feeds, corns, grains and flours has been known for quite a long time. The most commonly used preserving agents function by means of controlling microbe growth; hence reducing the microbiological contaminations in these animal feeds, corns, grains and flours. Currently, a majority of the commonly used preserving agents are made by pure organic acids or their corresponding salts of calcium, sodium, potassium or ammonium (e. g. ammonium propionate, calcium propionate, potassium formate and many others). These preserving agents have various effective dosages, from about 0.1% (by weight) to as high as 10% (by weight). Therefore, in many cases such as animal feed production, and corn or grain storage (in silo), the required dosage and total application amount of a particular preserving agent could be very high.
Regarding to the applications of these preserving agents, it appears that there are many disadvantages and inconveniences associated with these commonly used organic acid or their corresponding salts. Among these problems, many are related to the food or animal feed products' safety or economical concerns. It is well known that the actions of these pure organic acids are effective yet frequently very intensive against the growth of bacteria, fungi and yeasts. However, in many cases, the same is also true for the animals or humans who consume the feeds or foods that contains these preserving agents, as well as to the workers or operators who contact these preserving agents during the manufacturing processes. It is already known that the corrosiveness and volatility of many these chemical agents may lead to mucosa irritation or other health issues.
These issues were only partially solved by using the salt form of these organic acids, as the corresponding salts are usually much less corrosive and less volatile than the acids. Nevertheless, their application as preserving agents has brought up certain new issues. As preserving agents, the effective activity of these salts are usually 100 to 1000 times lower than that of their corresponding acids (e. g. propionic acid in comparison with calcium propionate). This fact suggests that the effective dosage and total application amount of these salt preserving agents could be very high, which may result in new economical and health concerns.
With the aim to solve the aforementioned issues in the field, the subject invention was trying to find a type of compounds that are safe for both animals and humans, whose application procedure/method as preserving agents only needs a quite low effective dosage and that would prevent corrosion of storage facilities and equipments. In comparison with those organic acids, these compounds should be relatively non-corrosive and nonvolatile. On the other hand, in comparison with those salt preserving agents, they should be much more efficient at controlling the bacterial and fungal growth; hence their effective dosages can be much lower than those of the salts. Therefore, the application of these compounds as preserving agent would be characterized as non-corrosive, nonvolatile, safe and with a very low effective dosage. In this way, the application of these compounds will help to solve many of the aforementioned health and economical concerns.
The improvement offered by these compounds for controlling bacterial and fungal growth may be proven by means of experimental data, wherein samples of animal feed or food products are produced under different concentrations of these preserving agents and submitted to fungal challenge (inoculation with spores) and bacterial challenge (inoculation with bacteria), and later analysis to determine the efficiency of their functions to reduce the fungal or bacterial loads.